Dare to Dream of a Better Christopher Nolan

In the words of Eames, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

This is a multilayered dreamscape, and you are at its core. You are finished dreaming and would like to regain your consciousness. And in order to ascend, you must get a “kick” to wake up in the next level of the dream world. Under normal circumstances, one can achieve this kick by “dying” – by being killed, or by killing yourself. But this is a multilayered dream, and it is therefore different. Killing yourself here will only drop you further into your own subconscious.

It gets worse. If you’re not careful, your descent may eventually land you in the dreaded realm of Limbo. According to rumor, Limbo is an inescapable maze of thoughts and emotion. It must be avoided at all costs.

But wait, that’s not true. Limbo is actually very escapable. It is nothing more than another simple layer of the dream world. It is so ordinary, in fact, that killing yourself in Limbo will wake you right back up in the real world.

Does this make any sense to you, Mr. Nolan? Because I’m lost.

I’m lost because the plot makes no sense, not because it is over-complicated. I’m lost because I have no idea how you actually spent 10 years writing the mess that became Inception. And I’m lost because I have no idea what happened to the promising filmmaker we all eagerly watched blossom in the late 1990s.

The image of Christopher Nolan was that of a burgeoning auteur. Opening his career with Following, Nolan wet his beak in the deep pools of film noir. In the early days of the genre, noirs were B-movies, made with low budgets that meant shoddy sets and equipment that had to be hidden in the shadows. This is what gave noir its now-iconic aesthetic. Made for just $6,000, even the budget of Following hearkened back to the origins of the form.

And importantly, every part of Following was the product of Nolan’s sweat and passion for the medium; Nolan personally wrote, produced, shot, directed and edited the film. There is perhaps something to be said for having such a personal investment in a movie. Although he has retained some creative control, Nolan hasn’t had an opportunity like that since moving to major studio filmmaking.

After his debut feature, Nolan really turned heads with Memento. A complex puzzle of a film with an intriguing premise and a smart central mystery, it was an instant hit. More than just a great movie, Memento showed that Christopher Nolan was here to stay: his style recognizable, his talent apparent.

Then everything changed. A few very clever film executives saw Nolan’s proficiency with mystery and suspense, and asked that he work on a full reboot of Batman. On paper, this made sense but Batman Begins, despite being a critical success, was not the Batman film people were expecting. While it certainly had technical merit, it lacked any meaningful detective work and certainly did not paint the Dark Knight as a bastion of human intelligence.

Why didn’t Nolan simply build on the intellectually satisfying foundation he established in both Following and Memento? In many ways, those movies are better Batman films than any of the entries in The Dark Knight Trilogy. As any comic book fan will tell you, Batman is the Dark Knight, yes – but he is also the World’s Greatest Detective. While some of his arch enemies are physical matches for him, most seek to challenge his problem-solving skills and moral fortitude. This is a key trait that is mystifyingly absent from Nolan’s take on the character, especially given the director’s previous efforts.

Nolan’s descent continued with The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, the sequels to Batman Begins. Forget about making a good Batman film – these movies lacked personal touches that made Memento, Following and even Batman Begins such daring creations. Then, after a refreshing but brief return to his roots with the quiet The Prestige in 2006, Nolan finally announced his big non-Batman project: a sci-fi film called Inception.

It promised to be incredible. Some suggested that it would be the worthy sequel to The Matrix that we never got. Its cast and crew seemed like a dream team of filmmaking talent. But then Inception hit theaters and it simply wasn’t what it set out to be. Its story was muddled and inconsistent, spending copious time on world-building only to negate its own excessive exposition moments later. Its visuals were disappointingly unimaginative. And troublingly, its premise seemed to be lifted wholesale from Satoshi Kon’s seminal animated masterpiece, Paprika.

Nolan has a new sci-fi film coming out in 2014. It’s called Interstellar. It’s got a huge budget and features a killer cast – Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine and more are all set to star. And I really wish I could get excited for it, because Nolan should be able to handle the complex storytelling required of science fiction films. But all recent evidence seems to be to the contrary.

Mr. Nolan, I am asking you as an old fan. Remember where you came from. Remember what it was like to make a movie for just a few thousand bucks. Remember what it was like to craft a beautiful story with nothing but your mind, sans the backing of a Hollywood studio. Because I remember when that was your mission, Mr. Nolan, and I miss it.

~ Søren

This article was published in its original form in The Massachusetts Daily Collegian on December 3, 2013.